Peru shut down by mass strikes & blockades

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Peru shut down by mass strikes & blockades

Postby Gouda » Fri Jul 20, 2007 5:22 am

Peru’s President Garcia faces nationwide protests
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul20 ... -j20.shtml

Three weeks shy of his first anniversary in power, Peruvian President, Alan Garcia is facing nationwide mass protests against his political and economic program. Culminating in a two-day protest on July 11-12, millions of Peruvians including industrials workers, miners, coca growers, high school teachers, students and small merchants went on strike, organized marches, occupied public buildings and blockaded roads leading to all major cities.

***

What is significant about the uprising in the southern and eastern regions is that they are being led by grass-roots organizations, representing the population.

In the southern region

* In Apurimac the marches were led by the Confederacion de Productores Agropecuarios de las Cuencas Cocaleras del Peru and had the support of many rank-and-file organizations representing all sectors of the population.

* Public transport, banks, businesses, schools and the main food market all remained closed. In the city of Abancay, a 12-year-old girl died after being hit by a stone during a confrontation between school teachers and the national police.

* In Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incas, over 10,000 people poured into the streets, and the Federacion Departamental de Trabajadores del Cusco is considering calling an indefinite strike.

* In Puno, nearly 5,000 people led by the teachers union SUTEP and the Communist Party-led Confederacion General de Trabajadores del Peru (CGTP) occupied the airport runway in Juliaca. The army intervened to clear the airport.

Protesters also blockaded the highways. Located barely 40 km from Lake Titicaca, Juliaca is a major transportation hub and vital for trade between Peru and Bolivia. Local and regional authorities, as well as public and private institutions backed the struggle in Puno.

* In the second largest Peruvian city, Arequipa, there was no public transportation, and marches from the poor neighborhoods culminated in the Plaza de Armas, the city’s main square, with the participation of SUTEP, construction workers, students and teachers of Universidad Nacional de San Agustin.

In particular, the arequipeños were protesting against new taxes that increased the price of gasoline, and to demand the implementation of promised infrastructure projects like the Transoceanic Highway and the Majes Sihuas II irrigation project.

* In Tacna, the southernmost city and a trading post with Chile, the strike was backed by the region’s president who described it as a genuine popular expression against “the exploitation in the mines and the neo-liberal policies of the government.”


Nationwide Protests Over Neoliberal Policies Rock Peru

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/821/1/

Peasant leader killed as protests paralyse Peru

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international ... 33,00.html
Investors say the president, now styled as a mellowed, mature pragmatist, has delivered stability and prosperity. Economic growth surged to 8% last year on the back of low inflation, fiscal discipline and robust investment. The IMF praised the turnaround and business leaders said the stage was set for an Andean renaissance.

However the half of Peru's 27m-strong population that lives on less than a dollar a day has lost patience because shortages of food, clean water and electricity have not eased. Mr Garcia's approval ratings have tumbled.


PERU: Escalating Conflicts Put Pres. García on the Spot

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38521
The workers are demanding that the government enforce labour laws, eliminate outsourcing of services, tax high mining profits, revise the free trade agreement with the United States, and give workers the freedom to opt out of the private pensions system, among other actions promised by García during his electoral campaign.

With the first anniversary of his term of office only 16 days away, thousands of Peruvians are calling García to account. Workers and social organisations crowded the streets and plazas of Lima on Wednesday, while strong protests also took place in the southern regions of Cusco, Arequipa, Puno, Tacna and Moquegua.[

At least four million out of the country's seven million campesinos (peasant farmers) stopped work Wednesday and Thursday and set up roadblocks on highways, mainly in the central and southern Andean regions, the president of the National Agrarian Confederation (CNA), Antolín Huáscar, told IPS.
User avatar
Gouda
 
Posts: 3009
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:53 am
Location: a circular mould
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby judasdisney » Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:44 am

I wonder why the New York Times reports, on a twice-weekly drumbeat, about the "radical authoritarian" horrors of (democratically twice-elected, hugely popular) Hugo Chavez, yet nary a bad word about Garcia.

I wonder how the New York Times will spin this one about Garcia.

I don't wonder what it would take for the decadent, fat, corpulent Western masses, including so-called "progressives," to pour into the streets and exercise a general strike like Peru.
judasdisney
 
Posts: 832
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 3:32 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

The Huayco is Coming

Postby chlamor » Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:38 pm

The Huayco is Coming
By Ángel Guerra - Translated for Axis of Logic by Manuel Talens, Tlaxcala. Revised by Les Blough
Jul 20, 2007, 08:01

Last week the telluric social explosion that Peru is incubating reached its higher point when strikes and popular protests against Alan García’s government virtually paralyzed all departments and big cities on the country.

Nobody should be surprised. It was totally foregone. But it surely has taken aback both García and his pals, unable on their arrogance to gauge the socially irreversible uneasiness that they have sowed. It is just not possible to make fun of people as local oligarchy, imperialism and their servants in Peru have been doing for so long without paying for the consequences.

During the last decades Peruvians have experienced a very traumatic social process. Their historical conquests have been snatched from them one by one, including the national usufruct* of their most important natural resources - a usufruct that was achieved by the nationalist and extremely paternalistic military government of Velasco Alvarado. It must be said: the notable advances then reached on sovereignty, independence and social justice could not be explained without the social sensibility that the most radical generals had acquired. But this sensibility was due to the impact made upon their conscience by the heroic popular struggle they were ordered to repress, as the most honest and patriotic from them recognized.

The recent protests not only shine for their mass-scale and extension but for having been able to articulate multiple local struggles for peasants demands, construction of roads, defence of environment and other social issues, with regional labour strikes and entire cities taken over by nonconformists who often blocked freeways and took over airports, rail terminals and buses. The protests were agglutinated by the combative schoolteachers union’s general strike against the approval of a Bill intended to privatize education and also by strikes by miners, textile workers and departmental contingents from Peru’s Central General of Workers against the prevailing labour slavery: working days of twelve and fourteen hours without a Sunday rest, wages of hunger and terrible work conditions. The rejection of ALCA, promoted by García behind the nation’s back - so betraying one more of his campaign promises in abject genuflexion before George W. Bush - was an omnipresent factor during the strike.

Workers and peasants, together with dissimilar popular detachments, have been a decisive factor on the events with the support of both left-wing parties and Ollanta Humala’s Partido Nacionalista Peruano (Peruvian Nationalist Party). This announces promissory unitary perspectives to the cycle of struggles now open in the Andean nation, especially if they succeed in coordinating on a large front.

<snip>

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/a ... 4942.shtml
Liberal thy name is hypocrisy. What's new?
chlamor
 
Posts: 2173
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 11:26 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Peru shut down by mass strikes & blockades

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:40 am

Gouda wrote:Peru’s President Garcia faces [b]nationwide protests[/b]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul20 ... -j20.shtml

Three weeks shy of his first anniversary in power, Peruvian President, Alan Garcia is facing nationwide mass protests against his political and economic program.
.....
At least four million out of the country's seven million campesinos (peasant farmers) stopped work Wednesday and Thursday and set up roadblocks on highways, mainly in the central and southern Andean regions, the president of the National Agrarian Confederation (CNA), Antolín Huáscar, told IPS.


"I'M LOVIN' IT!"

(And this is why McDonald's and Coca-Cola are keyword hijacking the name of Mr. Chavez to keep this populist uprising away from Amercian cities..)

http://mcdonaldsstl.com/promo_HUGO.asp

Image
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
User avatar
Hugh Manatee Wins
 
Posts: 9869
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 6:51 pm
Location: in context
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby Gouda » Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:44 am

At least 337 dead in Peru quake
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/ameri ... index.html

(CNN) -- A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 struck off the coast of central Peru Wednesday evening, and series of aftershocks rocked the country in the hours that followed.

The death toll from the quake grew quickly overnight with at least 337 dead and more than 1,350 injured, Peru's Health Ministry reported.

President Alan Garcia said the worst destruction appeared to be in Canete, Chincha and Ica.

"We have declared a state of emergency in the Ica Department and we are going ... to ensure that regional and local governments, civil defense institutions and ministries can spend what they need to, rapidly and immediately, in order to solve the problems that exist there."

In the aftermath, the government closed schools, Labor Minister Susana Pinilla Cisneros said, adding that the Labor Ministry building in Lima was damaged in the quake along with other public buildings...
User avatar
Gouda
 
Posts: 3009
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:53 am
Location: a circular mould
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby orz » Thu Aug 16, 2007 2:23 pm

Hugh you really missed a trick:
Image
orz
 
Posts: 4107
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2005 9:25 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby Seamus OBlimey » Fri Aug 17, 2007 6:51 am

So did you, orz.

Image
User avatar
Seamus OBlimey
 
Posts: 3154
Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:14 pm
Location: Gods own country
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby orz » Fri Aug 17, 2007 7:17 am

ha nice. :)

Actually, hugo stuff aside, the idea of a toy petrol pump like that is kind of disturbing in itself...
orz
 
Posts: 4107
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2005 9:25 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby Seamus OBlimey » Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:39 am

Yeah, like most of the plastic crap McDonalds uses to lure kids. Made in China from oil. In real terms that shit must cost more than the food, so what are they really selling?

Almost back on topic I hope. There have been some very convenient earthquakes in the last few years.
User avatar
Seamus OBlimey
 
Posts: 3154
Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:14 pm
Location: Gods own country
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Peru shut down by mass strikes & blockades

Postby alloneword » Wed Apr 17, 2019 9:43 am

Not worth it's own thread, but a nice way to round this one off:

Alan Garcia: Peru's former president shoots himself as police arrest him amid bribery claims

The former president of Peru has shot himself in the neck as police officers arrived at his home to arrest him in connection with a bribery investigation, his lawyer has said.

Alan Garcia was taken from his house in the capital Lima to the Casimiro Ulloa hospital, El Comercio reported.

The 69-year-old was under investigation for alleged money laundering and bribery crimes related to the Odebrecht corruption scandal.

Local TV channel America reported Mr Garcia was in a coma. It broadcast images of his son and supporters arriving at the hospital. Local media said he shot himself in the neck.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 74366.html

So like... he missed?
User avatar
alloneword
 
Posts: 902
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:19 am
Location: UK
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Peru shut down by mass strikes & blockades

Postby stickdog99 » Wed Apr 17, 2019 6:25 pm

alloneword » 17 Apr 2019 13:43 wrote:Not worth it's own thread, but a nice way to round this one off:

Alan Garcia: Peru's former president shoots himself as police arrest him amid bribery claims

The former president of Peru has shot himself in the neck as police officers arrived at his home to arrest him in connection with a bribery investigation, his lawyer has said.

Alan Garcia was taken from his house in the capital Lima to the Casimiro Ulloa hospital, El Comercio reported.

The 69-year-old was under investigation for alleged money laundering and bribery crimes related to the Odebrecht corruption scandal.

Local TV channel America reported Mr Garcia was in a coma. It broadcast images of his son and supporters arriving at the hospital. Local media said he shot himself in the neck.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 74366.html

So like... he missed?


He shot himself in the neck after the arresting police so graciously allowed him his privacy? Weird that I cannot seem to find a single comment questioning anything about this report.
stickdog99
 
Posts: 6302
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:42 am
Blog: View Blog (0)


Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 39 guests